3 – 9 April

Dear ONL’ers,
This week, we have the opportunity to catch up and reflect. The course may seem to consist of a lot of meetings and activities, but a major part of it is what happens in between. Therefore, this week does not contain any common scheduled events and since you are all busy people, you probably have one or two things in the course that you need to catch up with. Your group has been working for five weeks and you have hopefully written your first two reflective posts. These are a few questions to ponder:

  • When you look back at the meetings with your group, what do you see? What are you happy with? What could you do differently (better?)?
  • And doing your reflective posts – how has that been for you? For most academics, writing is defined as serious work done within certain terms of reference depending on which part of academia one belongs to. With these reflections, there’s an opportunity to do something different, something else – an opportunity to let one’s personality show, express views and opinions. And… it’s difficult and scary too. If you haven’t already, we strongly suggest that you read a few of your fellow participants’ posts, and comment! There’s nothing like comments for motivation! The reflective posts from participants who connected their blog to the ONL site is found here.

(You could also possibly want to have another look at the course requirements, here, to see what is expected of you.)

At this point, one or two of you may have noticed that the initial frustration or feeling of clumsiness and awkwardness in relation to some of the tools etc has somehow lessened. We believe this is due to the fact that you DO things, that the course is authentic in that you are put in the place of real students and immerse yourself in the material provided in/found through the course. We often put it as “the course IS the course” and the result of it all mostly depends on what you do with it.
To create accounts etc. and familiarising with the course environment is thus not preparation before the course starts; it is well spent course time and part of the content!

Wish you all a lovely week! ?

AIMS

By the end of this week, you will have had the opportunity to

  • Reflect on your learning so far in the course
  • Catch up if you have missed anything

SYNCHRONOUS ACTIVITIES

The reflective week does not include any common scheduled activities, however there are two opportunities to join a Reflection clinic:

Monday 3 April at 10-11 am (CEST) / 4-5 pm Kuala Lumpur, Singapore

Thursday 6 April at 2-3 pm (CEST) / 8-9 pm Kuala Lumpur, Singapore

Information and link to these clinics are available in the ONL231 community space.

CHECKLIST

By the end of this week I have:

  • Written two reflective posts, one for topic 1 and one for topic 2
  • Read and commented on other participants’ posts
  • Generally caught up with the course